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Robots to Crawl Under the City

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the dreaming-of-electric-sheep dept.

Johan Louwers writes "Robots will crawl tubes in a short while to investigate power cables running in the tubes to make sure they are still undamaged or in need for a repair. The Robotic Cable Inspection System is developed by Alexander Mamishev, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Making use of infrared thermal analysis and acoustic partial discharge analysis, the robot will be checking mile after mile of cable while crawling his way in the tubes."

3 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. *sigh* by joe_cot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not a paid member; can someone please tag this story "ReallyBadInternetJokeBait"?

  2. You can do it at home too by Chairboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Last year, my webpage describing how I did something similar (but spectacularly cheaper with the commensurate drop in ability) using some off the shelf electronics and an R/C toy was featured here on Slashdot, my first slashdotting!

    http://hallert.net/misc/tankcam/tankcam.html

    There are other crawlspaces out there, get under your houses and make your own robots do your bidding!

  3. What'd be really neat... by fussili · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is if they leeched power from the cables at open nodes in the system and just roamed on a set path at all times.

    Autonomous little service droids, keeping everything working - now that's the future.